Dr. Who semi-hemi-demi review

Just finished watching my first episode from the Series 1 Dr. Who, thanks to needing to test a feature on my company's new software which allows a Tivo-like function. And I also had to test our new MPEG-2 player.

This was not the first in the series, it was somewhere in the middle, I think, Aliens in London, Part 1. No spoilers here, just some impressions.

The production values are brilliant. The inside of the Tardis finally looks like a complex machine which may need to be hit with a rubber mallet to get it to cooperate. Vastly improved sets, lighting, special effects. Someone put some serious money into this series.

Casting is much more diverse. Blacks and East Indians in major supporting roles, the Brit version of white trash, etc. They forgot the senior citizens, though - everyone is under 40.

The writing is both better and worse. They make a constant effort to be current, but sometimes go a bit overboard. Campiness is part of the charm of the previous incarnations, and they have lost a chunk of that, I think. And without spoiling anything, I have to say that they should have left the farting out of this episode. It's a cheap laugh, and you would think they could come up with a more clever way to make the characters in question stand out. Sneezing, perhaps.

Billie Piper as Rose, the Doctor's sidekick, is excellent, but the role is seriously shallow as previous sidekicks go. Christopher Eccleston is not my idea of a Doctor. He's too normal. And they have written him as rude in a blatantly offensive way, where the traditional doctor is rude by being pre-occupied, absent-minded or maybe just out of your league. Noel Clarke as Rose's bloke Mickey is a gem. I want to see more of him, I want him to be a bigger part of the series. Frankly, if they had not blown it already by casting him in this role, I would have liked to see him as The Doctor. He could have pulled it off, I think.

YASM

(Yet Another Senior Moment)

I see from my notepad that the reason I popped up the LJ widget, it was to write about my lunchtime bike ride, and Dr. Who was going to be after that. So, my bike ride. Today I decided to ride out past my usual loop, and see if I remembered correctly that there was a strip mall with food places just the other side of 237 from work, on Tasman. So I hauled myself up over the overpass (I hate working that hard on a bicycle), and instead of a strip mall there was nothing. Just residences. I took a jaunt on Fair Oaks toward 101, and found The Lion and Compass, but there was no place to park a bike, and besides, the place is way pricey anyhow.

Back to Tasman, continuing past Fair Oaks, maybe the strip mall was there. Nope - just a trailer park. Boo hiss. So I continued on to Lawrence and across, and had lunch at Chubby's Grill, where they had to big-ish TV screens playing the last gasps of the England-Sweden game. The crowd was rooting for whomever scored. Just as I sat down, England scored its one goal, and just as I was leaving Sweden tied it up in the final minutes.

Back to work, I considered hopping on light rail, but the trains are at least half an hour apart, and I was only 15 minutes away. About 3 miles, a little more. So I rode the bike.

That was more biking than I want to do at lunchtime, will not do that again any time soon.

Got out of work on time, for a change, and made the early train, but it was only one car instead of the usual two, so the bike racks were all full, I had to stand with the bike in the doorway the whole way.

Home, dinner, decided to make a special dessert. Took a couple of tablespoons of the mascarpone cheese, slapped it into a coffee cup, mixed in some unsweetened powdered chocolate, a few crushed walnuts and two packets of Equal. Stirred it all up together. It was terrific. Kind of a low cal parfait.

Went to OSH and Safeway, noticed the Albertson's in San Antonio Square is closing. That's a shame, it is a HUGE store, clean, carried some items Safeway doesn't. But Albertson has announced it is closing a lot of Bay Area stores, and this one never did get enough business to justify its size. When they gut the place, I bet they find customers who have been lost and assumed abducted by aliens.

My BritRail pass arrived. UPS slipped it under the door. Quite a feat, because the door really doesn't have that much of a gap. And they're supposed to drop things off at the rental office when nobody is home, so they get a signature. Lazy bastards.
 

One Little Candle

One Little Candle
Originally uploaded by how3ird.

Six more posted to Flickr. This is possibly my favorite photo of the 2,000 or so I took there. It's Bangkok, Loi Krothong night (full moon) and I took the monorail to the end of the line, Taksin Bridge. Walked across the bridge which was mobbed with people watching the lit up boats on the Chao Prya River. At the other end of the bridge, down several flights of stairs, hundreds of people were lining up to get to the one dock where you could actually launch a krathong into the river. Lots of children, and for many (like this one) it was their first festival.